Datastore Upgrade; Virtual Machine Upgrade - VMware ESX 4.0 - UPGRADE GUIDE UPDATE 1 Update Manual

vSphere Upgrade Guide
vSphere Host Update Utility
This tool is for upgrading ESX 3.x/ESXi 3.5 standalone hosts to ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0 and for patching ESXi 4.0
standalone hosts. A standalone host is an ESX/ESXi host that is not managed in vCenter Server.
This utility is intended for small deployments with fewer than 10 ESX/ESXi hosts and without vCenter Server
or vCenter Update Manager. The utility includes a wizard that guides you through upgrades. While an upgrade
is in progress, the utility provides visual status.
vCenter Update Manager: Orchestrated Datacenter Upgrades
vCenter Update Manager is for upgrading ESX/ESXi hosts that are managed in vCenter Server.
With Update Manager 4.0 and later, you can perform orchestrated upgrades of hosts and virtual machines.
Orchestrated upgrades allow you to upgrade all hosts in the inventory by using host upgrade baselines. You
can use orchestrated upgrades to upgrade the virtual hardware and VMware Tools of virtual machines in the
inventory at the same time, using baseline groups containing the following baselines:
VM Hardware Upgrade to Match Host
n
VMware Tools Upgrade to Match Host
n
Orchestrated upgrades can be performed at a cluster, folder or datacenter level.
This significantly simplifies the upgrade of hosts and virtual machines.
In addition, this tool enables you to configure policy-based compliance monitoring and remediation. For
example, you can define a host upgrade baseline to upgrade an ESX host to ESX 4.0, a virtual machine upgrade
baseline to upgrade the virtual machine hardware to the latest version, and VMware Tools to the latest version.
To do this, you use wizard-based workflows to first schedule host upgrades for an entire cluster and then
schedule a virtual machine upgrade for all the virtual machines.
Built-in best practices in the wizard workflows prevent erroneous upgrade sequences. For example, the wizard
prevents you from upgrading virtual machine hardware before you upgrade hosts in a cluster. vCenter Update
Manager monitors hosts and virtual machines for compliance against your defined upgrade baselines.
Noncompliance appears in detailed reports and in the dashboard view. vCenter Update Manager supports
mass remediation.
For detailed information about how to use vCenter Update Manager and how to orchestrate upgrades, see the
vCenter Update Manager Administration Guide.

Datastore Upgrade

No VMFS upgrade is required if you are upgrading from ESX 3.x/ESXi 3.5 with VMFS3 datastores.
Read-only VMFS2 support is deprecated in vSphere 4.0 and might be removed in future vSphere releases.

Virtual Machine Upgrade

Unlike previous releases, when you upgrade to vSphere 4.0, you must upgrade VMware Tools before
upgrading virtual hardware.
C If you do not perform the upgrade in the correct order, your virtual machines might lose network
AUTION
connectivity.
To ensure that the virtual machine upgrade happens in the correct order, you can use vCenter Update Manager
to automate the process. See the vCenter Update Manager Administration Guide.
12 VMware, Inc.